On the heels of the uprising started in Tunisia and the continuing ones in Egypt, comes a new one in Yemen. This is huge - the current Yemeni government is a significant ally to the US in the "War on Terror" even as it serves as a training ground for Al-Qaeda and is subject to terror attacks. These protests could serve as a turning point for autocratic governments in the Arab world. Just imagine if our foreign policy, instead of supporting the status quo, supported the building of new representative governments in these countries, and helped to provide the opportunities that so many of these people are desperate for. What if instead of letting the people get further entrenched into hopeless poverty under repressive regimes, the United States took a stand and helped bring opportunities to people. A 20-something with opportunity in this world, will generally not sign up for a life of militant jihad. This is how we should be fighting the "War on Terror".
Instead it seems as if we will only watch and wait to see what happens. And watch as oil companies flow money into the autocratic regimes to provide stability to region and quash the protests so that they will be able to drill for more oil and post more billions of profit, that end up being larger than the GDP of the countries that they export oil from.
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